‘The Office’: Inside Jim and Pam’s Romantic Booze Cruise Scene
The Office episode titled “Booze Cruise” provided an almost opportunity for Jim to once again tell Pam how he really felt about her. A moment presented itself but passed him by, offering a sweet and romantic scene between the characters that made fans root for them even harder. During the Feb. 26 Office Ladies podcast, Jenna Fischer and Angela Kinsey dive into that moment.
The ‘Booze Cruise’ episode was shot on a real boat
The Office Ladies podcast did a deep dive into the Season 2, Episode 11 “Booze Cruise,” which found the Dunder Mifflin workers aboard a boat for some social fun. Fischer and Kinsey were joined by showrunner and “Booze Cruise” writer Greg Daniels, who gave even more behind-the-scenes details, including that sweet scene between Jim and Pam.
Daniels explained why filming on a real boat was important, sharing, “We certainly believed in that and went out on this real boat in Long Beach Harbor… To me, the key of it was that romantic scene on the top deck between Pam and Jim.”
“I just thought it would be so pretty up there with the twinkling lights of the harbor in the background,” he shared, but when it was edited “it didn’t really look that impressive.” It turns out they could have done the scene on a soundstage, but there was something about the real boat and the cold weather that made the scene pop.
Jim almost got up his nerve
Before Jim and Pam’s top deck scene, there was a scene with Jim, Katy, Pam, and Roy sitting at a table where Katy says, “We’re at the cool table” and they all talk about what they were like in high school. When Katy showed off her cheerleading, there was a small moment of flirting that contributed to Jim getting the nerve to tell Pam how he feels about her.
“Without that little moment of them bonding over how ridiculous their significant others are being, it’s like you need to see them as that bonded couple so it doesn’t come that out the blue that Jim would think this could be my moment,” Fischer shares.
“Pam really gives him an opening on the top of the boat there,” Daniels explained. “That to me, the Jim thing of it, was she’s engaged and he wants to be a good person and respect the fact that she’s engaged, but he’s also like, there’s all these clues coming in that there could be something… and he doesn’t go for it and it’s very frustrating to watch.”
Kinsey adds, “it’s so painful to watch, but also feels so honest because that’s how you would be. You’d want to say everything and you wouldn’t be able to.”
The scene had a lot of silence
They also dove into the silence between the characters that made things difficult in the scene. “There was a lot of urge to trim that up. That’s an awful long time to have people not talk,” Daniels added.
In the scene, Pam says to Jim, “Sometimes I just don’t get Roy” as they stand together, with Fischer noting, “This is the first time we’ve seen her complain about Roy to Jim, to disparage her relationship… I’m pretty sure, and then it’s 27 seconds of silence.”
“There’s a lot going on in those 27 seconds. Just cause people aren’t talking doesn’t mean nothing’s going on,” Daniels shared. “I think that you look at [Jim’s] face and you can see him trying out different things and thinking… and then also on your face there’s all this kind of like disappointment that he’s not gonna do anything.”
Interestingly, Fischer notes, there was no big pause written in the script, but rather the characters would look at each other — but Daniels encouraged them to take their time.
Daniels shared, “that was part of, I think, what made the show so special and so different from what was on TV was that moments of behavior were really important, more so than jokes, and setups, and punchlines, and lines, and stuff. I think that came out of appreciating what’s good about a documentary… this was a good romantic example of it all being in between the lines.”
